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How fluent to be a Polyglot? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 9 of 49 25 January 2006 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I second what Hencke says.
Although I don't think a native accent or no grammatical errors are required, the accent has to be understandable, and the grammatical errors should be low enough as to not to significantly impair communication. To me, the native speaker element is relevant. I remember being at a Spanish.meetup.com meeting and understanding the advanced gringos very well. We discussed it a little. My conclusion is that it was easier to understand gringos because the vocabulary selection was smaller than a native speaker, the speech was slower, and the sentence structure tended towards English. Real native speakers may speak much faster, have a wider vocabulary, use cultural references, vocal reductions, etc. I don't think one has to be able to do all of these to be fluent, but one should be able to understand native speakers pretty well to put on the "fluent" badge in my book. I guess one could say they read Chinese fluently, even if they can't speak Mandarin, if they're saying they can read the language as well as a typical high school kid. But it seems they should use the "read" qualifier with "fluently". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7149 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 10 of 49 26 January 2006 at 2:07am | IP Logged | ||
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If you can converse to be understood in five languages, I guess we are saying you are a polyglot. You don't have to speak the languages perfectly. (No one does, anyway.)
Also, if you can read ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit as well as speak your native language, I guess you are also a polyglot, even though you can't speak any of the ancient languages. I have friends in Australia who have an accent and speak terrible grammar but no one would question the person if they said they spoke English. Our state premier comes from Lebanon and speaks without any trace of an accent but he does get his verbs confused. He can still claim to speak English and no one would doubt that he is bi-lingual. Here is a question. We all have a fair idea of what it means to be bi-lingual. Do we expect the same degree of competence in each language to be a polyglot? Edited by fanatic on 26 January 2006 at 2:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7095 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 49 26 January 2006 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
My guess is no. I would grant polyglot status on anyone who could speak 5+ languages at the level of conversational proficiency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6890 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 12 of 49 26 January 2006 at 9:44am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks :-) I never thought about myself in that way. To be honest I never studied language in the "geeky sense" (i.e. university level), but I'd say that I master five foreign languages + my mother tongue; I also have some limited proficiency in two other foreign languages. However, I never thought about languages as an asset (like the ability to analyze a political event) or as something that I could use in my professional career. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7095 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 49 26 January 2006 at 9:57am | IP Logged | ||
You are welcome! Maybe it is just low expectations from a native English speaker? :) Anyway the “geeky stuff” requires more than just language skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6890 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 14 of 49 26 January 2006 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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By geeky I am referring strictly to univerity studies, which, as I have learned, is by no means an indicator of proficiency level. When it comes to foreign languages I regard myself as a rather self-taught person meaning that I never received any serious linguistic education (except for basic public school courses in English 15 years ago).
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| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6870 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 15 of 49 05 February 2006 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
So what would you call people who read 8 or more foreign languages but can keep up a conversation in only 4? Not saying that those numbers apply to me (not denying it either), but I for example translate technical texts on most any subject from French, but my spoken French is lousy. In Mexico (once) and the Canary Islands (several times), I seldom have to use other languages than Spanish, but I won't translate from it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 49 05 February 2006 at 11:50am | IP Logged | ||
This is an interesting question. Would the longish 8-language-paper-polyglot and fully fluent in 4 languages be clear enough? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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